Why Every Educator Needs to Hear Ron Clark Speak

I bet this picture got your attention :)

Friday I got to hear Ron Clark speak at a teachers conference in my town. It was AMAZING! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ron Clark click here for a little background info. In a nutshell, he is a teacher who moved from North Carolina to NYC to teach in Harlem. While there he took a low performing class and not only educated them, but inspired them. At the end of the year they ended up scoring higher than some of the "gifted" classes in the district. Ron Clark was named Disney's Teacher of the Year, is a New York Times Bestselling author and has been on countless news shows. So... as you can see, he's kind of a big deal in the teaching world :) Personally I believe every single educator needs to hear Ron Clark speak at least once in their career. I cannot even begin to describe how inspiring and motivating it was to hear Ron speak in person. For those of you who have heard him speak, you get it. For those of you who haven't  you need to. Ron started out just like I pictured he would in his classroom, he jumped from a chair to the table. Talk about getting our attention! For those of you who don't believe...please look below for exhibit A. 

On the table :) It's ok, it's his teaching style!

He stood on my table a million time, I felt like I was in the VIP section haha

He shared stories from his own teaching experience, what he believes needs to change in the education system, as well as how to deal with hard things that come with being a teacher {I don't need to list them, if you're a teacher, you know what they are :)} As teacher's it's easy to get discouraged. Every now and then we need a little inspiration ourselves. Ron Clark provides that in his speaking engagements and books. When I left the conference I was so "full" that I needed to sit down and just process everything that I had heard. That's the type of encouragement that all teachers need to hear. 

Ron Clark & I 

Getting my book signed was very exciting! 

Here are some of Ron Clark's books on Amazon.com

And of course the movie "The Ron Clark Story"

P.S. Ron Clark allows educators to go to his school for training. I am going to save all my pennies so I can attend the National Conference in June. For more information on Educator Training click here.